Ed Davor

It's impressive to hear someone say they actually used it. Usually it's just conjecture.

Looking the 5251's curve, it seems it has a lot bigger toe than 5247. 5250 is very similar to 5251. So I'm not sure about this. Did you communicate with someone that used 5251 back in the day (or used it yourself?)

Are you sure 5251 had much latitude? I'm not an expert, but I think one of the trademark of those old stocks was low shadow detail and almost reversal-like latitude which forced cinematographers to use a lot of fill lights, even in exteriors. Not speaking for 5254 though.

The great thing about 2001 is that there is no 'correct' interpretation since it deals with themes which are beyond human experience (and that includes the author). Is it alien CG? Or induced hallucinations? Or something beyond the material world itself? I like a movie that makes you ask a lot of questions on the way home from the theater. Either way, the star-fetus calls for a birth of a new human, a person of greater awareness perhaps, greater ethics, or something beyond human itself perhaps.

This doesn't look like a very good transfer to me. Someone mentioned that it's one of the early Blu-rays. In those early days of Blu-ray I think a lot of them were made using older HD transfers that were made for DVD editions. Doing a HD tape for DVD is one thing, but IMO a lot of these transfers don't look that good on Blu-ray. There's a lot of noise reduction that eats up both the grain and detail in the image, and a lot of edge-enhancement. This is symptomatic of those older HD transfers. The trend changed later on when brand new transfers were started being made for Blu-ray editions, sometimes even using 4K scans. These seem to fill up the frame with useful detail as well as feature a natural (though not distracting) grain structure. I've seen 35mm movies from 60's that have more detail in the frame on Blu-ray than this edition of 2001, which is 65mm and should have even more detail. Such good transfers often don't need edge-enhancement, at least not that extreme, to provide a decent visual experience for the viewer. I think 2001 deserves a new Blu-ray edition, from a 2K or 4K source.

I'm sure there's that too. All one has to do is look at super8 footage to see the lack of fine gradations. But in this case I think It has a lot to do with lighting. I do some digital painting, and when you want to paint something lit by soft light you'd have to smear the paint a lot to get gradations. Hard light subjects can sometimes be oversimplified by using just 3 or 4 tones in a minimalist approach.

I think the "nuances" you see are due to soft lighting. Soft lighting causes more gradations on the face while hard lighting (which was usual for the period in other movies) gives a more cartoonish look to the actor's face.

For some reason I couldn't edit my post so I'll make a new one. Just wanted to add that development edge effects seem to play a big role in the "look" of these old stocks.

Here is some data on the stock (sensitometric curve and spectral dye density curves). In fact on the same graph you can see a difference between 5250 and 5251.

Yes, that's just a digital snapshot taken last year.

No, that's called an internegative. There were special internegative film stocks used for making prints from slides. You'd copy the transparency using this internegative stock (similar to how you'd make an internegative from an interpositive in motion picture printing) and then print that on photo paper. There were alternatives though (cibachrome for example).

Hi, Interpositive is something different. It's actually a negative stock exposed by an image from a negative (in motion picture printing). Reversal (E6) film comes out as print-contrast positive when processed. In fact in the old days (up to 90's I guess or so) reversal film (slide film, transparency film, E6, chrome film, these are some of the terms used for it) was the "industry standard" for professional photography (advertising, magazines, etc.); mostly used in medium format and sheet film sizes, but also in 35mm. Negative film was also sometimes used for pro photography, especially for wedding photography (ease of creating prints for customers, and also greater latitude for shooting black and white dresses), but "slide film" was the king back then.

I think George meant that he can't imagine it being 35mm (not that he can't imagine it being reversal film). Even though "slide film" is a term often used to describe reversal (E4/E6) film in all formats, technically a slide is a mounted piece of 35mm film. A "transparency" is a more correct term for 120/220 and sheet film.

It's rotogravure (instead of offset) printing, this is why it has such a texture.

Try and force a curve sholder to the highlights of the image. This goes for the second two images. The first one has "healthier" highlights. What I'm saying here is, create a nonlinearity to the highlights, instead of just changing the slope of the entire curve. The third image has some contrast masking in it (it's looks like it's from some rotogravure print material) which tended to produce edge effects. It's a bit difficult to be specific, because these 3 images all have unique artefacts, and they aren't exactly of the "same look". This is an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2014/09/15/DSC04304.jpg

I know the orange mask in the IP isn't made to compensate for the blueish cast (but to tweak the IPs colorimetry), but in theory at least, it still does add more orange to the image I guess. Thanks

Thanks, So if the IP has an orange mask, does that mean that the color bias from the negative is compensated to neutrality? (orange in the neg is blueish-cyan when reversed, yet compensated by more orange in the IP?) In other words. If I were to look at the image on the IP, would it look like a neutral low con print? Or would the image be blueish? That piece of film that they are watching on the lighttable in the video, is that a print or an IP? Judging by the clear base I'd say a print, right?

Thanks for your answer David, One thing that puzzles me is that they show a vistavision print in there too. So I thought that this was the same piece of film they put into the printer. So you are saying that it's an IP that goes into the printer instead. I've never actually seen one; does it have a cyan tint, or is the orange mask at this stage fully compensated? In this documentary there is one instance where they actually do use a print; it's for the ewoks dance scene where they project a print onto a piece of screen behind the matte painting on glass and photograph it then together. But it's a small image area so I guess the contrast issues weren't noticable so much.

It's not mine. This is archive footage posted on youtube by a company that sells it.

Hi Recently I saw this documentary on youtube that showed the actual process of creating one of the scenes from Return of the Jedi. They showed a person operating an optical printer. But there is something I didn't quite understand about the process. Please take a look at this clip and I'll explain what I don't understand: Around 4:55 you can see the optical printer superimposing the mask and the foreground footage. Before the mask aligns you can see the blue screen. I thought that negatives are composited together in the optical printer. If you can clearly see the blue color, this can only be a print. Either that or they adjusted the colors in this video so you can see the actual image (but I doubt it, since this documentary was also shot on film). Also take a look at 2:50. The person is creating a matte box for this shot with cards. I remember a couple of instances in SW (in older video transfers) where you can actually see this box around the ships (the black changes it's level in that area). But what is this person putting the cards in front of? Is it a screen of some sort? Is this rephotographed from a rear projected screen or something? It can't be some kind of a gate because it's too big. And again, the image behind is clearly a print. Did they copy prints unto a new piece of negative stock? Wouldn't that cause gamma issues? If it's true that they used prints in optical printers, why is that? Wouldn't it be better to compose low gamma negatives unto a fresh piece of intermediate stock (gamma 1?) in order to preserve the contrast? I don't get the gamma math here.

Hi, Thanks everyone for your answers. I really like this footage. It's beautiful.@mark: We also don't have any info here about the methodology of this transfer. A lot of older transfers seem to suffer from low dynamic range. And if I'm not mistaking, they sometimes used prints. I've seem more shots from this same reel, these are actually rushes I think, and they could well be transfered from a print. I say this because this is unused footage (for a British Airways ad I think) that never got to the interpositive stage, so it's either the original negative (which I find unlikely) or a daily-print. That's just my speculation though. I think I saw leader writings on some of these shots.

Hi Can someone explain to me, how do you get a nice looking exposure like this using just a ISO100 (or 125) film stock (5247, the only one available in 1980), with such low light levels. I know big cities such as NYC have a lot of light on the street at night, but still... I guess they pushed it 2 stops? Would it still be enough? Did they have decent "beyond-f2.8" lenses back then? I know you can get very close to f1 these days with special lenses. Is this the secret?

By the way, is there some good literature out there that covers most of the procedures from lab work, negative cutting, printing etc.? I know the basics, but I'd like to read more about the details of how things were done.

That makes a lot of sense. I suspected that it was a 6th generation copy. I think that pretty much answers my question. Thanks.

Hi, can someone explain to me why did trailers (in classic film projection) always look inferior to the actual movie in terms of image quality? I'm not sure if this was so in the last generation of film prints before the switch to digital projection, but I sure remember it in the 90's and 2000's. The trailer would usually feature more contrast, grain and less resolution than the actual feature presentation. My best guess would be that trailers were compiled out of dupes so they were a 6th generation copy (instead of 4th like the feature presentation). Is that true? And if so, why is that? What was the standard process of assembling a trailer? Thanks